The Ayham's Ramadan

Chapter 01

CHAPTER 01: DIFFICULT DRIVES

The phone rang two times before it fell silent on the bedside table. When it did, the bathroom door urgently opened with a thud, and a lady rushed out of there. There was a towel in her hair and creases in her kameez. She picked up the phone and saw the notifications. Then, she put the phone to her ear, taking off the towel from hair. As the phone rang on the other side, she wrung her wet locks.

"Hello?"

"Uh, assalamu alaykum."

"Walaykum assalam."

"Have you finished packing up?"

"Yes, it is about done."

"Okay, tell Tariq to get the stuff in the Jeep. We'll be leaving as soon as I come home."

"Okay, Allah haafiz."

Ayna scrunched her eyebrows as she looked at her phone. She wondered if her mother-in-law ate bitter gourds and brinjals and teendays and what not that her youngest son came out so...hard-boiled. Alas, her mother-in-law had passed on quite a while back, and thus she couldn't question her about anything. And while she did like the ruthless bad-boy type in novels, she really wished she had had a normal husband rather than this masterpiece.

No reply to my Allah haafiz.

'Nevermind', she mumbled, grabbing the suitcases and walking to the door. She dropped them on the floor and opened the bedroom door, and then hurriedly stepped down the stairs with the weight. Listening to all the clattering, Tariq Baba came and quickly took the suitcases away from her, in his own hands.

"Aap humein bulaa hi deti, Ayna beti," he groaned, dragging them along the marble floor. Fahdah shook her head. However old and sick he might have been, Tariq baba always treated her like a daughter, and never let her do any work that he thought was unsuitable for a daughter in the presence of her father. He was the butler and didn't do a lot of physical work, and yet became tired, and then when he was asked about it, he said, 'yeh naye mulaazim kaam kam aur apney uss dabbey mein zyaada ghusey huwe rehtey hain'.

Dabbey = smartphones.

"Nabeel saaheb ki gaadi nahin aayi beti! Saamaan kahaan rakhna hai?" he called out from outside. Pausing her never-ending string of thought, she walked out to the patio and told him not to wait for his office car and keep in his Jeep, and then went back upstairs.

Ayna shuffled amidst the salwaar suits that she had decided to leave behind here, and tried to choose one that she could wear for the journey. Travelling in a jeep could perhaps be difficult, but she never exactly knew, because her husband had hardly even spoken to her, leave alone a drive together.

Ayna and Nabeel had been married for a mere four months. Their first meeting was a compilation of silence and confusion, and she didn't want to marry him, but what could she say? On one side were her manipulative parents, and on the other side, him. She was compelled to say yes. Nabeel worked in Karachi while most of his family lived in Islamabad, so she knew absolutely no one here except the househelp.

Cherry on the top? She was an introvert. That made it all the more difficult for her to bond with the new environment. So, she spent most of her time trying new things from YouTube and reading romance books. Lots of them.

~

By late afternoon, Nabeel was back home. It seemed like he had already had his lunch, because he immediately called out for Ayna and told her to come sit in the vehicle. Ayna had been waiting for three hours at this point, and since she thought they would have lunch together, she remained hungry.